Learning from each other
The other day I had a great conversation with Katie, my Staff Associate, and Rick Beckwith, the VP of Field Initiatives for Young Life. Rick, Katie and I have been friends for years and we had a great discussion about Young Life, the Church and how we can be reaching students better. Now, I have blogged before about partnering with other churches and ministries – something I think is a must do. But, out of this conversation, I had a different thought about partnering with others.
As we talked about youth ministry and leadership, I began to think about why other youth ministers do certain things and how we can inspire each other to follow a good example. When I was an Intern at my first Church, one of my first training assignments was to go interview 3 other youth ministers and learn from them. I was to ask them a lot of basic questions as to what they do and why they do it. As I was reflecting on this time, it made me curious as to how many youth minsters, myself included, take time to learn from and with other youth ministers. By this, I mean, how often am I meeting with other youth ministers now to process ministry and see how they are doing effective ministry (or, even as Rick said, “Sometimes we learn as much or more from seeing what folks DON’T DO RIGHT”).
To me, this is more than just meeting with other youth ministers regularly to discuss life and ministry. This was taking it a step further. I didn’t want to just talk about ministry, I wanted to experience ministry with someone else. Therefore, I challenged Katie and myself to “shadow” another youth minister and basically see what they do, why they do it and learn from them as I hang with them. I have an email into a few people to try to coordinate a time I can shadow them for an afternoon and evening.
Have you ever done something like this before? How did it go? When did you last shadow someone else? Shadowing someone else is probably one of many different ways we can learn from each other. What are those other ways? Share them so that others can try.
TAKE A MINUTE and…
- Think through how you learn best from others? Is it by talking with another person, reading blogs or shadowing others?
- When you’ve picked out a way to learn that works best for you, take a minute to coordinate a time for you to do that.
